Mario Tapia

I was asked to comment on my experience with a mobile virus that infected my phone in Heathrow back in 2005. Take a look at this Youtube segment from the news clip.

I’ve been busy with the 20 odd things I need to do on a daily basis at MWC and missed out on MSFTs acquisition of Danger. There are some interesting aspects of this acquisition, 1) The entertainment group (xbox) was the business unit that did the buying, not the mobile division, 2) the amount of the buyout was not mentioned.

Here’s my take on the buyout. There are two paths that MSFT can take with Danger. 1) morph the Hiptop to a gaming platform so that it competes with the Nintendo DS, PSP, and NGAGE. 2) leverage the back end sync service of Danger so that MSFT can compete with Apple and get a recurring revenue from unlimited service plans.

Danger as a gaming platform is hard to swallow, as a messaging platform it dominates any service/device on the market today, even blackberry. If MSFT can come up with a hosted service that includes activesync, exchange and integration in to the Live services, they may have a chance to compete with Apple.

The problem here is how the whole vision and integration schemes are being drafted. MSFT has done alot of shopping lately and I really don’t see how all these services play into a master plan. Verisign did the same over the last decade and they were left with a bunch of services that didn’t integrate with each other or neither did they every bother to come up with a plan. Now, Verisign has put that telecom division up for sale.

An even sadder thought is that MSFT will bury Danger and a once good product will never be heard of again, it wouldn’t be the first time MSFT did that.

I feel like its Deja Vu all over again with MSFT.

Buzzd won best new startup for 2007.  The community allows you to see what’s happening in your local area and allows feedback on wheather the venue is happening/crack’n or not.  It also allows Shout Outs to your peeps so you can tell them what you are up to.

I arrived on Sat AM in BCN, totally jet lagged but excited. I think the only thing that kept me going on the first day were the Cafes con Leche and tabacco. My client CELL got a really cool apt in the Born district, the Picasso Museum, marina and beach are very close by. The trendiest restaurants in the city are here as well. Sat night some of the team made it from Japan and LA so we met up with Jose and Iris, Bus Dev at Kyte.TV, for dinner and drinks.

Sunday was great, I woke up still feeling the effects of the wonderful Rioja from the night before. MobileMonday had a little gathering before the MobileSunday event from Mystrands. At the mixer I met some old friends and made some new ones. The big take away from tonight, besides having a lovely Austrian buy my a beer, is that I finally got to meet the Facebook Mobile team, Jed and team seem like a good crowd. After a while we left the mixer to get some great tapas

I look forward to the MobileMonday Peer Awards event tonight.